Sir Christopher Chope

Although I was educated at university in Scotland, I will not get drawn into Scottish politics, but there is a lot to be said for having a United Kingdom approach to all these issues. In some respects, we have probably devolved too much power to the Scottish Government for things that should more properly be dealt with by the United Kingdom Parliament. We heard in today’s debate on the Rare Cancers Bill that its clauses 2 and 3 are specifically limited to England and Wales. Although it is a very important Bill about research on rare cancers, it would not apply to Scotland. That is a bigger problem, but we will not get into that now, because I am trying to confine my remarks to the several hundred arm’s length bodies. I do not have time to go through any more examples, but the Government seem to have undergone a conversion. Suddenly they have seen the light, and realise that they need to take back control. I will use an anecdote to illustrate my proposition. When I was a Minister in the Department for the Environment, we had 18-storey tower blocks in Marsham Street. I was privileged to be a junior Minister, and Nick Ridley was my Secretary of State. For those who did not know him, he was passionately in favour of the freedom of people to smoke, if they so wished. One day, he arrived in the tower block and there was a big notice in the lift saying, “No smoking in this lift”, which caused him to say in a stage whisper, “Can somebody remind me who’s in charge of this Department?” Needless to say, the notice was quickly removed. When he was Secretary of State, he gave me the responsibility of dealing with a mega-quango: the Property Services Agency, which was responsible for massive delays and added costs to the building of the British Library, for example. He imbued in me a feeling that Ministers are in charge. One day, the permanent secretary, who was responsible for the Property Services Agency, went behind my back and basically said to Nick Ridley that I was responsible for a significant decline in the morale of the people working for the Property Services Agency, and he asked whether the Secretary of State could intervene. The Secretary of State said to the gentleman in question, “Sir Gordon, Chris is in charge of the Property Services Agency. If you wish to discuss anything with him, then I am sure his door is always open.” He reported that back to me, and from that moment onwards the relationships changed; the Minister was back in charge and the civil servants recognised that they were in a subordinate and accountable role. I hope that is exactly what will happen now with NHS England, and a lot of other arm’s length bodies, as a result of the Government’s conversion to recognising—